Says Harold Camping, the man behind the May 21st rapture nonsense. I wish I were joking:

But Camping said that he’s now realized the apocalypse will come five months after May 21, the original date he predicted. He had earlier said Oct. 21 was when the globe would be consumed by a fireball.


Saturday was “an invisible judgment day” in which a spiritual judgment took place, he said. But the timing and the structure is the same as it has always been, he said.


“We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning,” he said. “May 21 is the day that Christ came and put the world under judgment.”

Isn’t that just so convenient? It’s lovely when you make a testable claim, and then do a whole lot of hand waiving and goal post moving to explain why you were wrong.

I had a great time poking fun at the Rapture – it was basically an atheist holiday. But this just makes me sick. Why? Now Camping can keep scamming people for another five months. And this isn’t just the kind of “lol, gullible people” scamming. People have given away all of their money. People have attempted to kill themselves and their children to avoid post-rapture suffering. This man has ruined lives, and now he gets the chance to do it again.

And on a related note…why do equivalent loonies get quoted as experts, but not rational critics?

Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” novels about the end times, recently called Camping’s prediction “not only bizarre but 100 percent wrong!” He cited the Bible verse Matthew 24:36, “but about that day or hour no one knows” except God.”

While it may be in the near future, many signs of our times certainly indicate so, but anyone who thinks they `know’ the day and the hour is flat out wrong,” LaHaye wrote on his website, leftbehind.com.

This isn’t an alternative viewpoint journalists can use in an article. LaHaye and Christians who regurgitate that Bible verse believe the same crazy crap, they just don’t put a date on it. Where’s the quote from a skeptic or atheist?